#AskSpector: Giants running away with NL West, so why focus on Dodgers?

Jesse Spector

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#AskSpector: Giants running away with NL West, so why focus on Dodgers? image

Welcome to another edition of the #AskSpector Tweetbag, your one-stop shop for answers to the questions you have about baseball or anything else in the world. As always, if you have something you'd like to ask, the very easy way to do it is to go on Twitter and send it with the #AskSpector hashtag. The very hard way to do it is by getting a carrier pigeon, training it to carry a message to my house, then getting me to touch a pigeon to retrieve the message. That's not happening, so just do the Twitter thing. Here we go!

 

 

The Dodgers are half a game out of the wild card in the National League, which is futility only by the lofty standards set by preseason expectations. Don Mattingly compared his team's play to fecal matter, and while you can understand his frustration with sitting just above .500 instead of racing hard with the Giants, if the Dodgers are playing like solid waste, what does that mean for the Phillies, Cubs, Mets, Diamondbacks and Padres?

On Sunday in Colorado, the Dodgers had Chone Figgins leading off, and 5-8 in their lineup were Scott Van Slyke, Jamie Romak, Miguel Rojas and Drew Butera. Without looking, can you guess what positions those five players were playing? The answer is second base, center field, right field, third base and catcher, but the point is that the Dodgers have been besieged by injuries, while some of their healthy players have been well below their usual level. Matt Kemp has been prominent in any conversation about the worst everyday player in baseball.

The Giants are playing great, for sure, but the jury has to remain out on their remarkable success driving in runs with two outs. That's a much less interesting story to write and follow than "What the heck is wrong with the Dodgers?" San Francisco is good — I picked them to be a playoff team. "Good team overachieving slightly to post best record in league" doesn't really move the needle.

 

 

Yes, but does anybody really have to be fired? The Mets are not built to contend this year. If you don't think that Terry Collins is the manager who will bring a championship to Queens, then he should be fired, and the same can be said of Alderson if you don't believe in his plans for building a winner. We haven't seen Collins manage a Mets team with any sort of real expectations to win. They've had some good runs under his stewardship, but a lot of his in-game decisions are open to scrutiny. I can see both sides of the argument, but it comes back to that big question of whether he's the guy, and if you fire him, can you get the guy who is the guy? I'd be cautious about that.

 

 

You're asking me to predict how Ruben Amaro Jr. will run his baseball team. I have no way to do that. The time to blow up the Phillies was after last season. Instead, Amaro doubled down on veterans. Your guess is as good as mine as to what he does over the next seven weeks.

 

 

Giancarlo Stanton is third in the major leagues in WAR by baseball-reference.com's formula, and the Marlins are tied for the National League East lead. Where would he go?

 

 

I liked when Tony La Russa got to manage in the All-Star Game after he had retired. It's a nice sendoff for a situation like that. Really, though, it doesn't matter. The manager with the best record should at least be on the All-Star coaching staff.

 

 

No, that's Evander Holyfield. I remain unsure exactly what to make of the Blue Jays. They've been winning games, obviously, but there remains a whole lot of regression potential across the board, and while the rest of the American League East being a Dumpster fire has helped set up Toronto with a comfortable lead in the division, it's not like these teams don't all play each other plenty more times. I'm still not sold on "Blue Jays: contender."

 

 

Who says they don't already? Sure, they don't follow me with their "official" Twitter account, but it's not like the CIA to purposely blow its own cover. Everything I say on Twitter is out in public anyway, so what do I care?

 

 

I neither live near a water buffalo habitat, nor have I ever driven through one. I also have not fallen victim to any stray wildlife doig battle with my car. So, no. My car also has not been hit by any falling anvils, lifted off the ground by an angry tyrannosaurus, vaporized by aliens, or torn asunder by hungry bears.

 

 

My memory does not go back that far, but I can say with certainty that the fancy car that I would most like to have is a DeLorean with a working flux capacitor and an on-board Mr. Fusion.

 

 

I don't know. I really liked Frasier throughout the entire run, but I struggle to think of any specific episodes that really stand out to me. The ones where characters from Cheers showed up were interesting, because they had to deal with a very different and more layered Frasier Crane than they interacted with in Boston, but I don't think that those episodes really capture the essence of the show. Sometimes, I'll see an episode of Frasier is on, and I'll watch, and I won't be able to place it. It's just a show that was consistently above average from start to finish, but never really had standout moments for me. It's kind of the Fred McGriff of sitcoms (Editor's note: Frasier won 37 Emmys and Fred McGriff should have won one for this, so c'mon ...)

 

 

Waiting is a good way to get burned, so I don't blame the Capitals for acting quickly at all. They got a very good coach, and if Bylsma would have been a better fit than Trotz, it probably only would have been incremental. I don't think you go wrong choosing either guy, so if Trotz is out there, go ahead and grab him -- which the Capitals did.

 

 

I don't know if this will be comforting, but it's not just the Marlins.

 

 

I'll be thrilled if the US gets out of group play. The good thing about playing Ghana first is that it provides the best opportunity for a fast start. Of course, if the Americans lose again to Ghana, their tournament is basically over before it can even get going. So, I'm not optimistic -- it's a group with three excellent teams.

 

 

The WBC has better access to the best players, although not everyone wants to skip spring training with their team to play in a tournament. Hockey's world championships are played by players who are completely in game shape, but it's a secondary prize to everyone who would rather be suiting up in the ongoing NHL playoffs. I don't pay much attention to either one. Hockey has the Olympics, which is on the level of the World Cup for international prestige, while baseball still hasn't figured out that putting the WBC in November, after the World Series, is the way to go.

 

 

The "Steroid Era" will not be about actual drug use, which current methods have no hope of truly eliminating, but by the outlandish offensive performances. In 1992, the major league OPS was .700. It went up to .736 the next year, and remained over .730 for nearly two decades, peaking at .782 in 2000. In 2009, the major league OPS was .751, then dipped to .728 in 2010, .720 in 2011, .724 in 2012, .714 in 2013, and .709 so far this year. Steroids were in the game before the Steroid Era, and remain in the game after the Steroid Era, but the numbers paint a pretty clear picture of a historical timeframe in which offensive numbers skyrocketed: 1993-2009.

 

 

Of course I do. Who wouldn't? He's an enormous old man who still somehow manages to pitch effectively at the major league level, and now that he's in the National League, we get to watch the comedy that is Bartolo Colon at-bats. He's in on the joke. It's all good.

 

 

Move on to baseball season! (Note: This does not work for Cubs fans, for whom the answer is "move on to football season!" or "move on to hockey free agency!")

 

 

There is a right answer, but it has nothing to do with Green Day.

 

 

Doesn't everybody lose in a rebuild? That's what rebuilding entails — there's gonna be some losing. The Phillies haven't been thinking of themselves as being in a rebuild, but they have been losing. So, that's what's with them, I guess.

 

 

Without knowing any of your relatives, I can only guess that availability of potential wedding hook-up candidates is not a priority that gets the highest level of attention when they are planning their big day. Next time you get an invitation to one of these weddings, the obvious thing to do is to include your request along with your RSVP.

 

 

Once the bat has left Puig's hand, it is no longer subject to Puig's force. It is an objet d'art, to be admired, not to be petled with baseballs. While it is theoretically possible that Puig would flip the bat with such spin as to allow it to propel a baseball into the stands, but I think this only happens once Puig learns the art of telekinesis and applies it to his flipped bats.

 

 

It actually made sense in the era of player-managers. Nowadays, baseball pants are itchy. If I were a manager, I would ask if I could wear a suit, as Connie Mack did. Always couch it in history. Baseball loves that.

 

 

I think that when you're getting better election numbers than Assad did in Syria, somethng fishy is happening. It's distressing to see the military back in charge so soon after the people made clear their desire for democracy. I don't have any good jokes for this, because it's not a situation to joke about, but I also don't have the expertise to say anything further that will be of any kind of substance.

 

 

This is hard. Statistically, there are definitely more than five quarterbacks who are better than Brady, but would you rather have Brady or Matthew Stafford or Matt Ryan or Jay Cutler or Tony Romo or Andy Dalton on your team? If you were starting a team now, you would take Colin Kaepernick over Brady because Kaepernick is much younger and has that running ability, but for one season, with equal rosters? I'd still take Brady.

 

 

The best celebration for any situation is the same. It's the Ickey Shuffle.

Jesse Spector